As we run down the last month of 2012 (which has been a strong year for music), I thought I’d share with you some of my highlights for 2012 in no particular order:
I spent a few hours last night with a mate watching Shut Up And Play The Hits. Not the gig (yet) as that’s a 3-4 hour investment and I want to lay an afternoon away for that, but the features, and the film again. I wasn’t as teary as the first time I watched it in the cinema, but my god, it’s incredible. If you have the DVD watch the extras – mostly the full interview and also the fantastic mini doc on Keith a ‘year on’ from the gig. It was quite poignant and very funny. And it did feel like you were seeing people as wistful as we, the fans, were after the last shows.
I’ll watch the gig, maybe around Christmas. And probably blub. For now though, here’s one of their best moments:
Slightly late brothers, but the December album is Josh Rouse – Nashville. It came out in 2005, and I got alerted to it by my girlfriend at the time. It was something I’d have never really gone for without guidance, but don’t be fooled by the title, despite the odd steel guitar, it’s not a country album. It’s just a pitch-perfect slice of songwriting that tugs at the heartstrings. It grows with each listen, and it’s written distinctly with vinyl in mind, even when I had the CD it was listed as ‘side A/B’.
It had some emotional resonance with me, as it straddled the breakup of the relationship that brought it to me at the time, but that’s years in the past, and its effect hasn’t lessened, even though the association to that time’s now in the distant past. It’s also something I’d go – knowing the Brothers’ cd collections (and how hard it was to select something outside them) – as far as to say may just not fit for you, but if it does, it’ll be worth it. That’s the risk with new music. 99% of the albums I like, one of us has, so this is something different (it was between this and a Ben Folds Five album, but I chose this as it was more rewarding in the long term for me).
It sounds pretty timeless. It could’ve been made in 1975, or 1995, and it’s rare to find a modern album like that that hasn’t aged at all. I saw him perform it live in 2005, and it was just as powerful.
So, listen, digest, critique, and lay it all back on me. Only a cold soul could fail to be moved by Sad Eyes. An absolutely heartbreaking record.
Here’s one of the album’s lighter moments, My Love Has Gone.
thisisnothappening.net 